Jane Fielding's List: climatechange

• Well I've just spent 24 hours trying to get Great Circle Distance calculations working in Fort

• This plan is a whole life plan.  It involves the educational system, the energy market, the transportation system, the governmental system, the health care system, food production, and more. 

• Fully two-thirds of the scientists attending the 33^rd International Geological Congress in Norway in August 2008 were hostile to, even contemptuous of, the UN’s IPCC reports on global climate catastrophe, which had been shown to be fatally compromised by glaring errors, false predictions and spurious sources.
• The truth is that Global Warming, to quote Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London, “has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices”

• If you really want to get back to nature then you better be prepared to lose a few things such as; electricity, metals, drugs, light bulbs, doctors, engineers, dentists, your teeth, Facebook, hospitals, manufacturers, roads, twitter, bridges, factory goods, your books, your mobile phone, your internet, your spectacles, your television, your Playstation, the artificial dwelling you live in, the very clothes you wear, your bicycle, the shoes you’re walking around in and knowing what new ideas are prevalent at a distance beyond the next village, but only as long as it’s within walking distance.

• • "There's no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we're not addressing the one single factor that's putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other – namely the ever-increasing size of the world's population. I read the other day that, by 2020, there are going to be 70 million people in Britain. Let's face it, that's too many."

• Any minute now I'm going to lay off blogging for a while, for health reasons. But I can't pretend I'm going to find going cold turkey easy, especially not when there are stories like this around.

   

  It concerns "wildlife expert" Chris Packham – presenter of some of the BBC's most popular nature programmes including Springwatch and a new series called The Animal's Guide To British Wildlife – and some deeply unpleasant remarks he made in the course of an interview with the Radio Times.

   

  "There's no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we're not addressing the one single factor that's putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other – namely the ever-increasing size of the world's population. I read the other day that, by 2020, there are going to be 70 million people in Britain. Let's face it, that's too many."

   

  So what does he suggest we do about it? Get people to stop having children?

   

  "Yes. Absolutely. I wouldn't actually penalise people for having too many children, as I think the carrot always works better than the stick. But what I would offer them tax breaks for having small families: say, 10 per cent off your tax bill if you decide to stick with just one child. And an even bigger financial incentive if you choose not to have a family at all."

   

  What frightens me almost more than these remarks – whose loathsomeness I shall gloss in a moment – is the response of the Daily Mail's readership.

• here are the second and third most popular comments, with well over 1000 positive votes each:

   

  He is quite right you know, the most eco friendly thing you can do is not breed.

   

  Well done Chris I couldn't have said it better myself. That is the main problem with this planet — too many people. We require a massive birth control programme, never mind growing more food and building more houses — cut back on breeding is the only answer.
• There are so many things wrong with this attitude I don't know where to begin.
• Yet such is the misery that Chris Packham wishes to import to Britain
• • their ecological philosophy is fundamentally evil. And I do mean evil. Any philosophy which has, as its core tenet, the belief that mankind is the problem not the solution cannot possibly be one that pertains to good, can it?
• As one of their favourite think tanks, the Club of Rome, puts it: "Earth has a cancer and the cancer is man." This belief explains, inter alia, why the "science" behind AGW is so dodgy: because the science didn't come first. What came first was the notion that mankind was a problem and was doing harm to the planet. The "science" was then simply tortured until it fitted in with this notion.
• with much to gain from the spread of their dogma.

6 more annotations...

• http://tinyurl.com/3khbdmc - Jane Fielding on 2012-05-02

• By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life."
• the big prize, controlling and eliminating fossil fuels

• After years of criticizing the allegedly "settled science," Singer's side of the debate is enjoying new and widespread credibility. This is thanks to many convergent developments.

• 14 separate weather-related disasters causing $1 billion
• the industry has around $23 trillion in assets

• Last week regulators in California, New York and Washington said they will require companies to disclose risks their businesses and customers face from severe storms and wildfires, rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change. Your thoughts?

   

  That's a good thing. Finally all of the largest insurers in the U.S. will have to share with their regulators how they are building climate change into their business.

1 more annotation...

• As this column mentioned a few months ago, the launch of the IGCC "establishes a previously unimaginable regulatory framework